


Red Right-Hand

by spacelorde



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Horror, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25295413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacelorde/pseuds/spacelorde
Summary: Perseus thought this Halloween couldn't get any worse...he was wrong.
Kudos: 1





	Red Right-Hand

**Halloween, 1977-Texas**

At the end of a lane wastes the House of Medusa. Profane graffiti burns the porch of the old two-story house. Chipped, faded paint clings to the rotting wood paneling and is partially obscured by the vines creeping up them. Shingles hang precariously off the roof. Perseus, a local teenager, stands on the porch shuffles from one foot to the other in front of the door. A clown mask hangs loosely from his neck by an elastic. His face still stings from where his mom's boyfriend, Larry, punched him after trying to finally stand up for his mom. _Man, and she fawned over him after I punched him,_ he thinks. _And he stole my fucking savings after that, too. It took me five whole months to save that up...I had to work at the Burger Barn._ Perseus sniffs his shirt and realizes he still smells like beef. G _od I fucking hate it here._

He takes one last swig from a metal flask filled with vodka. It tastes off. He chalks it up to the blood from his split lip. _This dare is a waste of time._ His hand shakes slightly as he wipes the vodka from his mouth, relishing the sting on his lip and his buzz. Down on the sidewalk 20 feet behind, his two cousins watch and wait for him to enter the house.

“Ah, c’mon Percy,”Herman, yells. “Don’t be a fucking pussy!”

Minnie elbows Herman sharply in the ribs which earns her a shove.

“You’re gonna wake Her up you fucking idiot,” Minnie whisper yells to Herman while smoothing out her bloody, white ‘Carrie’ dress.

“You can’t wake up a ghost, Minnie,” Perseus shouts back, turns around and throws the flask to Herman before facing the door again.

Herman catches it and bats Minnie's hand as she reaches for it. He shoves it in his back pocket.

“Whatever, just go in already you fucking loser,” Herman yells. “And remember it has to be a whole hour you’re in there! Not a minute and a fart before.”

Minnie rolls her eyes. She promptly yanks on the chicken bone necklace around Herman’s neck and uses the momentary distraction to give him a titty twister on his exposed chest.

"Give me a fucking swig, spaz," she grits out with a firm grip on his right nipple. He steps on her foot with the heel of his boot and she finally relents.

"Unless you wanna trip tonight, you really don't want any of this," Herman says as he rubs his nipple. His eyes twinkle with amusment, his gaze firmly fixed on Perseus' back.

Perseus pushes the front door open feeling the sharp creak echo in his spine. He grips the flashlight a little tighter and flits the beam around the innards of the house. Cobwebs decorate the corners of rooms and doorways. Broken glass carpets the wooden floor in what must have been a living room. The moonlight filters in through the curtain-less windows and makes the shards glitter like diamonds. Dust collects on the banisters of the staircase a few feet in front of him.

A mouse squeaks and runs across his foot, and Perseus jumps a foot in the air. _Don’t shit your pants_ , he thinks. _Or scream like a little girl like you did last year at the corn maze when that scarecrow actor jumped out at you. God, then Herman went and told everyone,too. It took Mom ages to get the shit stain out of my pants. I loved those pants...It just has to be an hour._

His feet feel frozen to the floor.

 _Just put one foor in front of the other and the hour will be over,_ he thinks but still his feet won't budge. _C'mon I need a win today. I can't let Herman win again. Who the hell does he think he is anyways? I bet he couldn't last 20 minutes in this house._

Perseus glares down at his feet and grips his flashlight until his knuckles turn white.

_If I can get through this hour, I can kick that son of a bitch Larry out of my mom's house. Out of my house._

Despite the urge to spew chunks all over the floor, he takes a deep breath and his legs move again. A slight tremble moves through his right-hand. Perseus slowly creeps deeper into the house and decides to venture up the stairs. His palms begin to sweat and the flashlight slips a little in his hand.

The warped, rotting boards creak under his feet with every step. Every breath he takes fills his nostrils with the smell of mold, mildew and dust. He sits on one of the stairs, sneezes and listens to it reverberate through the house.

He feels his blood run cold.

Above him, footsteps shuffle across the wood floor. He feels his heart jackhammer in his chest. He clambers up from the steps and casts the glow of his flashlight up the stairs. The attic pull string swings from side-to-side. His head swims and colors dance in his vision.

*******

She’s not sure what wakes her but her eyes open to a full moon shining through the window. A thin and nearly threadbare sheet covers her to the shoulders. Her antique wooden bed frame squeaks as she shifts her body from one side of her lumpy mattress to the other. Faintly, she can hear the house creak and moan like it always does. Her eyes begin to close again to the house’s quiet lullaby.

But then, footsteps echo echo somewhere below and her eyes snap open again. She sits up. Her blanket slips from her shoulders and pools around her waist, which reveals her sleeveless white nightgown. She sits perfectly still. Hardly breathing.

She waits to hear the sound again.

The house groans instead.

 _It must be my imagination_ , she thinks, and settles back down in her bed pulling the blanket tighter around herself.

Then, she hears it. A noise somewhere between a sneeze and a shout. A third time her eyes fly open, and she can feel her whole body vibrate with fear. She swallows it down.

She slips her bare feet out of bed and shuffles over to her vanity to pour herself a glass of water.

 _It’s those damn kids again,_ she thinks _. Must be Halloween. They don’t know when to leave well enough alone. How many times do I have to wait them out?_

She looks into the mirror attached to her vanity and reaches up to touch her face. Once young and firm, her face has now become deep valleys of wrinkles...but the patches of her face that were scarred remain smooth. Untouched by time.

_Am I really so hideous that I have to be made into a spectacle like this? A sideshow freak with no admissions fee?_

There's a picture face down on her vanity that she picks up and turns over. It's a black and white photo of a young woman with a broad, bright smile.

She had been a beauty queen once. She was so popular that men from 3 towns over would come court her. She never went with any of them. Not until she was 25 and a navy man had come calling. He'd been the first man she'd gone steady with and the last. He'd been so handsome, so polite and she was a naive little fool.

She should have left him the first time he beat her. But what would her mother have said? What would the people in town have said?

_I cared so much about what everyone else thought and what do I have to show for it all? No family, no friends, an empty decrepit house, and the face of a monster. I'm a ghost story in the very place I was born._

_Lord Almighty, I'm so tired of this life._

She hears the attic hatch door groan open.

The sound of footsteps fill her room.

*******

Perseus’ right-hand shakes as he climbs the steps into the attic. Every step he takes sounds twice as loud in his head, and feels like an hour. He trips on the final step. Crashes to the floor, bumps his chin and scrapes his hands against the wood. The flashlight switches off as it hits the landing.

When he switches it back on a monster stands above him. Its dark hair is thick, matted and has an oily sheen to it. The hair moves like it's alive and he watches as Black Mambas unfurl themselves from the monsters scalp. Black beady eyes stare back at him. The left side of its face looks like it's falling off.

The once white nightgown it wears is stained and yellowed. Loose threads hang from the bottom. Perseus can see her big toe through one of the tattered, dirty pink slippers on her feet.

 _Herman put something in the booze_ , he thinks. _I'm gonna kill him. What the hell is wrong with him?_

“I’ve been drugged,” he whispers. “I’m tripping.” He stumbles backwards back down the attic ladder and shakes his head. “You’re not real.”

“Oh, but I am, sugar,” It says as it smiles at him, it flashes Perseus a row of sharp yellow, decaying teeth. It follows him back down the steps of the attic and down the stairs.

“Now you get out of my house and tell all your little friends to stay away, too,” It shouts, and tries to corral Perseus towards the door, but he turns into the living room.

“You're not real,” Perseus says. “You're not real.”

He trips over a floorboard, lands right on his ass and his flashlight skitters across the floor behind him. It flickers for a moment before turning off.

The Black Mambas whip around her head in irritation.

Perseus scrambles backward on his hands into the living room and cuts his hands on the shards of the broken glass littering the floor. The thing stalks toward him.

“Get out,” she says, over and over. “GET OUT.”

He lightly runs his left hand over the floor behind himself and makes sure to keep his eyes on It. His hand finds what they're looking for, a shard of glass much larger than the rest, and he carefully grips his left hand around it. It’s jagged, sharp and just long enough to make a mother worry. Blood roars in his ears, his heartbeat hammers away in his chest and as she takes another step towards him, he launches himself upward. The glass shard traveling with him. It turns into a dagger before his eyes.

_I don't want to die._

The sound of air whooshing out of a bag quickly follows the sick, squelching sound of the dagger being plunged into Its stomach. Time has seemed to slow. Perseus stares at his hand wrapped around the dagger and looks up, making eye contact with It. The eyes are wide with shock. It opens and closes its mouth like his sister’s goldfish. He loosens his grip before completely letting go of the glass shard turned dagger and steps away slightly. But the horrified peace only lasts for a moment.

_I want to live._

Its face morphs from shock to anger in seconds. Its eyebrows draw close together, as the eyes narrow and its mouth pulls up into a wild snarl. The snakes in its hair begin to flail wildly and try to snap at him with their venomous fangs. Hands close around his throat, squeezing. It begins to scream.

Perseus’ lungs burn as he fights to breathe. He slaps at its hands and face, trying to loosen its grip just a little. Just enough for some more air. But the snakes try to bite him and one comes dangerously close to getting a taste of him.

He pats his hands on the surrounding floor, searching for another shard big enough to fight back with again but to no avail. He’s starting to feel light-headed. _I’m gonna die_ , he thinks. _Holy shit. Fuck! Fuck_.

Something digs into his back making it even harder to breathe. He tries to reach behind himself to grab it, twisting and turning until it pops into his hand. It’s heavy and metal. His flashlight. No, his sword.

With a firm grip he whips the thing upside the head with it. The sound of metal hitting bone is deafening. The hands are no longer wrapped around his throat but it’s still on top of him, so he keeps going. The crack of his blows bounce off the empty walls. He switches their positions so he’s on top. The sword comes down again and again. Blood sprays on his face and clothes. His right-hand is dripping with it. Eventually, his right arm gets tired and the snakes stop writhing.

He stands up and begins to tremble.

"It was only supposed to be a dare," Perseus says, looking at the blood on his right-hand gleaming in the moonlight as it slides from the shaking sword and drops onto the floor. "She's not supposed to be real."

He looks at the mangled body in front of himself. Her right eye dangles out of its socket her skull cratered from the blows. Blood pools around her head. It has soaked through the front of her once white nightgown, and what’s left of her head is sticking to the floor by her bloody hair. The glass shards around her now lifeless body are stained.

“You’re not supposed to be real.”

He watches as blood oozes and bubbles from her mouth. It stains her lips like lipstick.

The thud of boots approach Perseus from behind and he whips his head around to see what the hell else is in this godforsaken house. There, the doorway to the living room, stands Sherman and Minnie. Sherman is frozen in shock with a cigarette in his fingers, stuck in the journey up to his lips. Minnie's hands are covering her mouth and she has tears in her eyes.

Minnie runs out of the house screaming and sobbing.

"What the fuck-what the fuck did you do man," Herman says. "She was just a little old lady. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Perseus points his sword at Herman.

"This is all your fucking fault," he says, blood flying. "You spiked the vodka. Why do people like you think they can just do things to everyone without consequences."

Perseus begins his advance on Herman, who backs up with each step Perseus takes. Herman puts his hands up in surrender.

"Hey, man chill out," Herman says, nervously. "It was just a gag, okay?"

But Perseus' hands aren't shaking anymore and when he blinks Herman isn't Herman. He's Larry, and all Perseus can think about is Larry beating his mom so bad she couldn't see enough to drive. All he can think about is Larry sneaking into his baby sister's room at night.

"You're never gonna hurt anyone ever again, Larry."

Perseus raises his sword high above his head and brings it down against Larry's head. And he doesn't stop.


End file.
